* ISCSI on a roll
ISCSI is on a roll and scheduled for mainstream adoption, analysts say.
While it won’t replace Fibre Channel in customer’s storage-area networks (SAN), it will have an impact on the network, and its number of deployments may sometime in the future surpass that of Fibre Channel.
That’s the analysis of the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), which surveyed 511 companies. ESG says that Fibre Channel use won’t diminish, but would be used to support high-end applications.
ISCSI meanwhile has been deployed by 17% of the companies surveyed; another 20% plan to deploy iSCSI SANs. Yet, 63% have no plans to deploy iSCSI.
ISCSI adoption is most prevalent in small businesses with 1,000 to 4,999 employees – of these, 22% have deployed iSCSI SANs. The technology’s adoption is slightly less in large enterprises of over 20,000 employees – only 19% have deployed iSCSI based IP SANs.
Some users say that iSCSI will not perform well enough for their enterprise applications. However, the ESG study showed that 87% of adopters were ‘very satisfied’ with the performance of their iSCSI SANs.
Fifty-eight percent of the users surveyed deployed iSCSI for tier-2 storage; 50% also use iSCSI for tier-1 applications. Many early adopters use iSCSI, not surprisingly, for secondary storage: archiving and disaster recovery.
Seventy-four percent of the users are storing file-based content on their iSCSI SANs; another 45% are deploying databases on the technology and 44% are using iSCSI for e-mail.
According to the study, the advent of 10G Ethernet will bolster iSCSI adoption. Over one-quarter of the respondents said they wouldn’t consider an iSCSI system without support for 10G Ethernet.
Among the 10G Ethernet vendors supporting iSCSI are NetEffect, Neterion, Broadcom and Chelsio.
Storage in the news:
* EqualLogic and Coraid rolled out new storage arrays that attach to the Gigabit Ethernet network.
* Dell and EMC unveiled new low-end storage arrays for small and mid-sized businesses.
* HP revealed its quarterly profits and highlighted its disappointment in server and storage sales.
* The Storage Network Industry Association formed an IP Storage Forum in recognition of the strides taken in iSCSI adoption.
* Fujitsu Siemens rolled out a new backup and recovery system.
